Medieval Castles and Pre-Modern Castle Towns Planned with Nature As the Heritages for Landscape Design Today: a Case Study of Nanbu Region in Tohoku
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17th IPHS Conference, Delft 2016 | HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE | VOLUME 04 Planning and Heritage | New Approaches towards Heritage Landscapes- and Territorial- Planning | Historic Estates and Estate Landscapes MEDIEVAL CASTLES AND pRE-MODERN CASTLE TOWNS pLANNED WITH NATURE AS THE HERITAGES FOR LANDSCApE DESIGN TODAY: A CASE STUDY OF NANBU REGION IN TOHOKU Keisuke Sugano1 | Ryutaro Okitsu2 | Shigeru Satoh1 1 Waseda University 2 Urban Renaissance Agency This research aims to manifest the Japanese traditional urban forms in Nature, selecting the castle towns built by Nanbu Clan from the medieval time to the pre-modern as case studies, seeking to discover the matching harmony between the ancient urban planning and Nature for the three points. 1) The medieval castle residences were built to adapt to various topographical conditions; their inner castle zoning and moats were designed to match the geographic condition. The pre-modern castle towns are verified, also, for their relation with the periphery sceneries, water systems and mountain worship by using their Yama-ate vista urban design, and also the temple dispositions were determined by the sea level in accordance with the temple’s status. 2) The urban design of each castle town, determined by its builder, was distinct from each other. 3) The mountains that gathered the Nanbu Clan belief are worth studying for modern landscape designs in that the mountain views are preserved and visible from the town’s main street. The town distributing of each Nanbu Castle Towns differed from each other depending on the time and builder; yet they all share one character – they all correspond to Nature and ecological environments. Keywords Japanese Castle Town, Natural Symbiotic Planning, Sacred Mountain, GIS System, Landscape Guideline How to Cite Sugano, Keisuke; Okitsu, Ryutaro; Satoh, Shigeru. “Medieval castles and pre-modern castle towns planned with nature as the heritages for landscape design today: a case study of Nanbu region in Tohoku”. In Carola Hein (ed.) International Planning History Society Proceedings, 17th IPHS Conference, History-Urbanism-Resilience, TU Delft 17-21 July 2016, V.04 p.285, TU Delft Open, 2016. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7480/iphs.2016.4.1296 V.04 p.285 Keisuke Sugano | Ryutaro Okitsu | Shigeru Satoh :MedievalcastlesandPre-ModerncastletownsPlannedwitHnatureastHeHeritagesforlandscaPedesigntoday acasestudyofnanburegionintoHoku DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7480/iphs.2016.4.1296 TOC 17th IPHS Conference, Delft 2016 | HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE | VOLUME 04 Planning and Heritage | New Approaches towards Heritage Landscapes- and Territorial- Planning | Historic Estates and Estate Landscapes INTRODUCTION The pre-modern castle town represents the traditional urban form of Japan, and the previous researches1 so far concern themselves with observing the interrelation between the urban compositions and their peripheries. This research, in the light of their results, has tried to discover how the castle towns built by the Nanbu Clan with their own urban planning methods distinguished themselves from other Japanese castle towns. That the Nanbu planning uniquely corresponded to Nature topography had various reasons, such as choosing the plateau for military purposes, Sinto-linked social hierarchy, mountain worshipping and, surely, their landscape planning designed to match their environment. Thus does this paper concern itself with disclosing the methods of Nanbu urban planning for their castle towns, trying to analyse the Nanbu planning developed back to the medieval days and applied up to the pre-modern era. Japanese castle towns preserve the essence that recalls the disappearing historical beauty being visible today from those traditional urban forms. For the following reasons the medieval castles and the pre-modern castle towns built by the Nanbu Clan are selected for this research. Nanbu is the district located in Tohoku (Northeast) Region of Japan, and the Nanbu Clan had ruled there from 1200 AD onwards till the End of Edo, a regime of six centuries. The Nanbu family tree consists of three main stalks; Sannohe-Nanbu the head House, Nejyo-Nanbu the major branch family, which had governed the district for generations2, and later on the revolt branch of Tsugaru-Nanbu, which became independent from the Nanbu Clan and ruled the Tsugaru territory. Along the vicissitude of rising, revolting and falling, several Nanbu medieval castle towns and residences were built among several locations, and following the process of town-distributing and varied styles of castle designs, each castle town distinguished itself characteristically from each other in its urban form. Still, how was it that the urban planning dispositions could correspond to the topographical condition? For instance, how was the vista designed to view the mountain top? All this must be studied and verified. Further, the aboriginal belief of Mountain worship, or Iwakura worship, was commonly seen in Nanbu District3 in particular. The Iwakura refers to the sacred place, usually a huge rock found in mountain, where the Kami deity arrives at, seats and dwells. And the Iwakura Rock was taken to be the centre of a concentric circle on which the town installations were placed.4 The vistas, or Yama-ate, serve as the “faith axes” that link the town streets with these sacred Iwakura spots, mountain tops or other installations like high temples or shrines, are verified. After the fall of Nanbu Clan at the dawn of 19th century, the Japanese government enforced the legislation of urban modernisation upon the Nanbu pre-modern castle towns and took those located in the districts of Morioka and Hirosaki – the home bases of Sannohe-Nanbu House and Tsugaru House – as the bases to practice governmental urbanisation. The government expected them to become the capital city or metropolis of Iwate Prefecture and Aomori prefecture. And yet, fortunately, the culture-historical resources of these castle towns, highly esteemed, were not left unnoticed in recent year, the traditional heritages prevail upon modernisation. All these historical urban designs, owing to their harmonic relation with the natural environment, are expected to revitalise the urban life of castle towns today. With respect to the expectation to live in harmony with nature, this paper aims to disclose the following four points. First, basing on the research of the historical texts of Nanbu Clan, the transformation of urban planning from the medieval to the premodern time becomes manifest. Second, the locations of these six medieval residences that were reformed to be the residential castles are surveyed and verified; the topographical forms of the inner castle zones and moats are studied; the locational relation between the castle moats and nature water system, rivers, marshes and the like, is surveyed. Third, all these five castle towns built in the pre-modern age in Nanbu district are studied with several attentions – the castle town’s relation to the locations of Iwakura and mountain top for the worshiping purposes of the aborigine of the Nanbu Clan in particular, and the relation of street composition, micro-topography and temple disposition in correspondence to nature. And lastly, taking Morioka and Hirosaki as research objects, the vistas to view the sacred mountain tops must be preserved, maintained and respected, as a major policy of modern landscape planning. V.04 p.286 Keisuke Sugano | Ryutaro Okitsu | Shigeru Satoh :MedievalcastlesandPre-ModerncastletownsPlannedwitHnatureastHeHeritagesforlandscaPedesigntoday acasestudyofnanburegionintoHoku DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7480/iphs.2016.4.1296 TOC 17th IPHS Conference, Delft 2016 | HISTORY URBANISM RESILIENCE | VOLUME 04 Planning and Heritage | New Approaches towards Heritage Landscapes- and Territorial- Planning | Historic Estates and Estate Landscapes figure1 The Urban Planning Transformation of Nanbu Clan THE URBAN pLANNING TRANSFORMATION OF NANBU CLAN Basing upon the research of the historical texts, this chapter has the attempt to disclose the vicissitudinous Nanbu Clan from the Mediaeval to the Pre-modern. The Nanbu clan consisted of three Nanbu Houses – Sannohe- Nanbu the head House, Nejyo-Nanbu the major branch House, and Tsugaru-Nanbu House the revolted one that governed, independently, the Tsugaru territory. The events and dates as such are listed in the following.5 Take the transformation of castle construction of Sannohe-Nanbu to begin with, their rising and falling can be traced back to the year of 1192 when the Heragasaki-jyō Castle was built on the location of Heragasaki-machi (the city of Nanbu) today, and at the end of 14th century Shojuji-Date Residence was built in the vicinity as the headquarter of Sannohe-Nanbu, and yet it was ruined by fire in 1539, and then a new castle was built on the hill some three kilometres south to the site of Shojuji-Date Residence. The Morioka town-distributing began in 1597 and finished up till 1633, and people settled in the castle town. From 1628 to 1629, the town-distributing processes for the central area of Hachinohe castle town and its branch castles were done and ready for living; the periphery of Hachinohe castle town was prepared for settlement. Second, the transformation of Nejyo-Nanbu castle town is noted. In 1334, it was built in Nejyo as the residential castle, and the residential castle was moved to Tōno in 1627; there, the Tōno castle town gradually got shaped up. And thirdly, the Tsugaru House built the Tanesato-jyo castle in 1491 and the Ohura-jyo as their home base in 1502. Stepping into the Age of Civil War, the feudal lord Tamenobu Tsugaru revolted in 1588 and took the territory of Tsugaru as an independent state. In 1610 the town distributing of Hirosaki castle town started. In 1656, Kuroishi, the branch House of Tsugaru, started their town distributing and rebuilt the partial town area, and the urban structure was formed before 1656.